A Night Out

Between the cold weather and Christmas anticipation, we couldn't stand to be pent up in the house anymore. So we jumped in the car and headed out for dinner. We still love to take Emmie with us. She really enjoys it and we love to be with her. We just happened to have the camera in my coat pocket, so we clicked away. MERRY CHRISTMAS from these 3 sillies!

November - check, On to December!

I felt bad that I didn't really wrap up my month of November efforts with an official "Thank you" to all of the friends, family, and people who really made an effort to advocate and support adoption in some way.  This is something very close to my heart and any response, comment, help, participaton, or action of any kind that happened on your part makes my giddy.  Just ask my husband!  I cried real emotional happy tears of gratitude when Lindsay and Patrick blogged about adoption.  I think I may have been the one that benefitted from sharing the most, but I really hope not.  I hope that someone else does...a child, a birth parent, a relative, anyone. 

The first of December brought more excitement for Emerson and me.  We packed two bags, one backpack, and lugged a carseat through the airport and flew to NH to see most of my siblings (Jon, Jen, and Maggie - we missed you!) and my mom's side of the family.  Oh it was great!  Emmie is such an awesome traveler.  In fact, it would be boring without her.  She makes everything more exciting.  Don't get me wrong, it isn't perfect traveling.  I mean, who really wants to carry a 35 lb carseat through the airport?  But totally worth it.  We feel very fortunate to see family as much as we have since Em was born.  THANK YOU family! 

In an effort to not be long-winded, we had a extremely relaxing, sweet, and fun-filled time while we visited.  We visited with Meme (she spoiled us :)), shopped, ate out, ate very well in, celebrated cousin Will's 7th birthday with a big party, played with 6 of Emerson's 9 cousins on my side, visited with my cousin Angela, Uncle Kevin, and Aunt Joann, saw our first breath-taking snowfall of the year (I am kicking myself for not taking pictures of how beautiful the snow was), listened to music and enjoyed watching the children dance and sing, went to the Montshire Museum of Science, went crazy at a Technica sale (shopped some more), and mostly...and best of all, we just were together by the warm fire in my sister's beautiful home full of people we love and who took such good care of us.  Seriously, I usually am ready for home in 4-5 days but those 8 days could have gone longer.  I missed Jared, but it was so nice to just be with everyone.  If Jon and Jared had been there it would have been just about perfect.  He had to have knee replacement surgery!  Poor guy.  Still, long winded I guess.  Oh well, here are some pictures:

Me and Kris (my sis)

Ryan and Will

Andrew and his boys Noah and Henry.

Emmie and Henry ("Henny" is what we call him).  Soooo sweet.

Noah and Adam are pretty good buds.  Wish this turned out better.

My sister-in-law Sandra "Dr. Dufour".  Such a cute picture of you Sandra!

Kris with sleepy Henry on her lap.

Ryan, Ben, and Eric....I better have some pics of Eric's face somewhere!

Sophie!

These next pictures I will call children at play because we couldn't get all 7 of them sitting together at this time in the evening after pizza, cake, ice cream, and excitement:

Playdough!

Juice box sippin' monkeys. 

These pictures are incomplete!!!!  I don't have enough of them - especially of just us adults and mom and Meme!  But the truth is who really wants to take pictures when you want to be in on all the fun?  You're missing out on the experience if your trying to caputre it with the camera.  Oh I miss you guys! Thanks for loving us and thanks for the extra luggage full wonderful things you sent with us!